As the New York Times Magazine recently noted, there is a caricature now abroad in the land of the former Alaska governor “as a vapid, winking, press-averse clotheshorse.” In other words, Sarah Palin is an idiot. Dumb as a post. Too dumb, but of course, to be president.

This mother of five with a successful marriage, the woman who, without benefit of a famous name or marriage, has been elected successively to positions as city council member, mayor, president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors, served as the appointed (by the then-governor) chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission before being elected governor herself — this before becoming only the second woman to be tapped for a major party vice-presidential nomination, a successful author and bona fide TV star like Reagan — this is the woman who is now presented by everybody from GOP Establishment types to liberal enemies as just a vacant Barbie-style version of other men who were too dumb to be president. Goldwater? Romney? Ford? Reagan? Kemp? Bush 43? Bush 41? Like them all, Sarah Palin is just too dumb to be president.

To ask why so many elites dismiss Sarah Palin as dumb is to ask not only the wrong question but to willfully ignore a by-now very, very distinct pattern. It is, yes, a pattern of modern media treatment with prominent Republicans that is discernible as far back as Dwight Eisenhower. But in fact what some call Palin Derangement Syndrome is merely the modern face of elitist arrogance that has been present since the evolution of America itself as just one more colonial outpost of the British Empire.

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The only people who are dumb — really dumb — are those inside the Republican political-consultant complex who think that by nominating someone other than Governor Palin they will have a nominee capable of avoiding this particularly dumb fate.

The Republican nominee for president in 2012 is being prepared by the American liberal media to be presented as a woman — or man — who is too dumb to be president. It is a preposterous proposition on its face, all on the list being, like Palin, people of enormous accomplishment in life. It is even more preposterous in the face of the utterly laughable idea — now validated by the actual results of the 2010 elections — that the Harvard-trained President Obama has been some sort of a whiz-bang genius in the White House. With unemployment riding perpetually just shy of double digits, the nation’s treasury massively in debt to the tune of trillions, with all this “outreach” to Islamic countries who still inspire would be bombers and terrorists — the real question may be “is the someone too dumb to be president already president?”

But no one in the liberal media will ask this of any liberal president. Republicans and conservatives only need apply for the “too dumb to be president” title.

I can accept the argument that Palin may not be able to communicate her intelligence in a manner that certain segments of the American population will accept. But this meme that she is an idiot needs to be shot down with extreme prejudice. Her recordmanifestly disproves such a notion.